From 9to5Mac:
With the help of the Apple Support website, users can find a lot of information about the Apple devices they own. This includes things like technical specifications, guides, and support articles. However, all this information used to be spread across multiple pages – but Apple is changing that with a new “Documentation” page.
I’ve updated my folder of Apple Support shortcuts to include a new “Show Apple Support documentation” shortcut.
From Issue 104 of my Shortcuts newsletter:
Welcome to Issue 104 of What’s New in Shortcuts!
We’re far out of the Apple Vision Pro hype cycle and WWDC tickets are in developers’ inboxes already – however, iPad rumors are still swirling for May as well.
iOS 17.4 has been released, which brought new actions to Shortcuts for the Action button, as well a general stability that’s been much needed – there are still Feedback reports to file for 17.5, however.
In the Shortcuts Catalog, I’ve been going deep on entertainment shortcuts, plus Mac window management on the livestream. Plus, I linked to many videos, app updates, and stories worth checking out.
Here’s what’s new in Shortcuts:
On Thursday, April 4th, I hosted an episode of Shortcuts Live with special guest Stephen Robles to discuss how the iOS 17.4 update makes Action button shortcuts more dynamic, Stephen’s latest videos, and what’s coming at WWDC.
Throughout the discussion, we also covered special techniques for If statements, potential improvements to the Podcasts actions, and future ChatGPT integrations, as well as filed “verbal Feedback” on issues we want to report to Apple.Here’s a detailed breakdown of what we covered:
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Wicked Little Letters in theaters ahead of release thanks to Regal Cinemas’ Mystery Movies, a series they put on that lets fans buy $5 tickets to an unknown movie (usually an upcoming film).
Now, for April 2024, they’ve put out tickets for three more Monday Mystery Movie nights, each linked below – I just happened to be checking their site out and these aren’t even listed on the main portal yet:
If you’re subscribed to Regal Unlimited like I am, you can get the tickets “free” with your pass.
Plus, if you want to check out Mystery Movies in the future, you can use my shortcut that takes you back to the bookmarked page.
Check out Monday Mystery Movies from Regal and check out my folder of Regal Cinemas shortcuts.
I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Regal Cinemas shortcuts:
Check out the folder of Regal Cinemas shortcuts on the Shortcuts Library.
From Stephen Robles on YouTube:
Learn how to build 15 iPhone Shortcuts, inspired by YOU. Automatically play music when an alarm is snoozed, schedule a text to auto-send, make your screenshots look pro, and more.
Stephen continues his Shortcuts series on YouTube by building shortcuts off listener requests – a great watch as always.
After leaving her position as CEO of Yahoo in 2017, former Google employee No. 20 Marissa Mayer is back with a new group photo sharing app called Shine from her company Sunshine, aimed at solving the “send me that photo” problem according to her Twitter thread around the new release.
With Shine, you create an album for a time and place, choose the type of selection process, and then share with other people – the selection part is where the “magic” happens, since Shine lets you optionally let AI select the best photos for you (or you can choose manually). Shine can also suggest albums automatically after-the-fact too.
The “Magic Mode” automatically uploads the best photos identified by AI as they’re taken, and when in manual mode you’ll still get suggestions but the app lets you approve them before sharing.
Shine lets you share photos in full resolution, automatically removes duplicates, and lets viewers download the photos from the app or see them with an album code, link, or QR code.
The app also has comments and reactions built right in, turning each album into a psuedo-social network for each event. After the event, these interactions are shared into an Activity feed, making the entire app a feed of comments around event’s you’ve attended.
Shine looks super interesting as a Minimum Viable Product from Marissa Mayer’s team, not only because it seems to truly take a honest stab at solving this problem well, but also because it’s backed by a powerhouse in the tech space. Right now there’s only an iPhone app and no web interface, and some of the design leaves a little to be desired (the app generally seems to lack padding) – things that are easily fixable over time, however.
I think the drawbacks actually speak to the true MVP nature of this app – it’s clearly not the best version of the app product itself, but I do think how they’re approaching this problem is novel and still worth addressing, even in 2024. I’m glad Shine focused their energy on solving the core problem properly first, and over time they can invest in making the app experience even better.
Get Shine on the App Store and read Marissa Meyer’s thread on the launch.
From Zac Hall on 9to5Mac:
Unfortunately, Apple didn’t make a first-party USB-A to USB-C cable for this situation. Instead, the company sells a $29 USB-C to Lightning adapter as its official solution.
My advice? Don’t spend $30 on a dongle when you can just replace the cable. Even though Apple doesn’t sell one, USB-A to USB-C cables are easy to find.
Zach’s recommendations are great for more reliable brands, but I was looking for a super-short cable and landed on these “OneKer” cables that are only 1 foot long (and only just now noticed the pun in their name 🤣).
Today, alongside the announcement for WWDC’24, Apple revealed their Apple Developer channel on YouTube where they’re now publicly hosting developer videos, starting with everything released from WWDC’23.
Previously, videos were only available Apple’s own website or Developer apps, limiting the potential reach to folks who’d already heard of it – now YouTube users can freely discover and watch Apple developer videos to learn about building for their platforms.
As of writing, there are 40 videos uploaded – so it’s not the complete set from WWDC’23 (yet?) and as such I unfortunately can’t find any Shortcuts-related videos. Once more are uploaded, and folks tune in after WWDC’24, it’ll be super interesting to see view counts and comments on these videos – we’ll be able to see what’s more popular/interesting to folks, as well as check on common questions in the comments.
Plus, for the intrepid Shortcuts user, all of YouTube’s RSS or URL functionality is now available for Apple Developer videos – I’ll be able to scrape the title, thumbnail, and descriptions to make quick embeds on my website, for example 🤓.
From Tom Robertson at Coeffiencies:
Living in a house, or even an apartment or condo, as an adult, requires periodic maintenance tasks, like cleaning the bathroom, changing your sheets, replacing the furnace filter, etc. A lot of these tasks should ideally be done on a regular schedule, like changing your sheets every two weeks, or your furnace filter every 3 months for example.
I’m sure a lot of people just kind of mentally keep track of this kind of stuff, but I’ve never really trusted my own memory on it. And I don’t like the idea of a room being dirty serving as my reminder to clean it. I’d ideally like to clean it before it gets too dirty.
So to keep up-to-date on my household tasks, I need a way to help me with of the following:
- How many days has it been since I did that task?
- A reminder to do that task if it’s past the time it needs to be done.
Tom basically made the perfect solution I’ve been looking for using Reminders, Chronicling, and two custom shortcuts – well done.
Performing repeatable tasks is something everyone does on their Apple devices, whether you’re accessing relevant information, sharing from a set of common links, or taking the same actions over-and-over – OneTap, an alternate keyboard app, makes it easy to find and share all that from any app using quick keyboard shortcuts.
Distinct from Apple’s Shortcuts, OneTap allows you to set up a series of shortcuts that you can switch to from the default keyboard, quickly navigate to find, and tap once to activate.
Your shortcuts in OneTap can be organized into convenient groups, letting you put similar shortcuts together under a unique name, icon, and color so they’re easily identifiable. These groups show up when accessing the alternate keyboard, letting you tap through and find individual shortcuts.
OneTap also adds a single-tap AI options for passing selected text to GPT-4 and returning generative text, letting you essentially integrate Chat GPT into any application with this one app.
OneTap is available on iPhone and iPad as an alternate keyboard, plus on Mac the app makes it functionality available via Apple’s Shortcuts app by providing a shortcut that you can trigger using the wide variety of ways you can use Shortcuts for Mac, like via the Menu Bar applet.
Plus, OneTap comes with actions for Apple’s Shortcuts app, letting you manage your groups and add, move, or edit your items in an automated fashion – or take advantage of the ability to generate a OneTap AI response.
My thanks to OneTap for sponsoring the blog for the week of March 25.
From the Accidental Tech Podcast:
In this special members-only VIDEO episode, John finally reveals his window-management techniques.
This episode is a perfect, ahem, follow-up to my livestream with Rafael Conde talking Mac window management.
Watch the full video on ATP.fm.
Note: This episode is exclusive to ATP members, but worth joining to enjoy.
I’ve just added a new folder to the Shortcuts Library — my set of Groceries shortcuts:
Check out the folder of Groceries shortcuts on the Shortcuts Library.
From Stephen Robles on YouTube:
Dive into the latest iOS 17.4 update with NEW Shortcuts actions for iPhone. Learn how to leverage new orientation and physical activity actions for enhanced device control and automation.
⭐️ Get the Shortcuts
Peaks is a unique app for iPhone that, when I discovered it, caused me to exclaim “How I have not heard of this before?” This circadian rhythm app visualizes the daily rise and fall of your energy levels based on your internal clock, taking into account things like your sleep patterns and routines to create a guide for how to approach your day.
Peaks offers a set of routines that you can toggle on or off, plus get notified for, like when it’s time to Avoid Caffeine in the afternoon or Wind Down at night. Routines like Creativity, Exercise, Energize, Focus, and Decisions are helpful as well – these fall into time periods throughout your day that you may understand inherently, but are helpful to remember and even actively be notified it’s the optimal time for.
Certain routines also offer unique options, like tracking your streak for avoiding late meals or fitting tasks in your optimal working times.
As your day progresses, Peaks’ visualization also zooms in to let you see peaks and valleys, plus marks off previous routines in the timeline. Tapping the Share button in the top right corner lets you share the graph of your biorhythm with someone else.
The Insights tab also shows visualizations of your sleep patterns, showing time asleep and sleep quality data, your consistency over the last two weeks, and heart rate data from Apple Watch or a third-party sleep app. Plus, you can see your Energy Score, letting you estimate today’s potential based on a summary of your other metrics.
Peaks works best when combined with its great widgets for the Home Screen, Lock Screen, and StandBy mode for iPhone, letting you ambiently see your progress throughout your day.
Plus an Apple Watch app complete with complications and Smart Stack widgets makes it easy to check in with your body, right from your wrist.
My thanks to Peaks for sponsoring the blog for the week of March 18.
From Michael Potuck at 9to5Mac:
Always-on display Shortcuts
You can also set up control of the always-on display in the Shortcuts app – which offers Siri support:
- Open the Shortcuts app
- Tap the + in the top right corner
- Choose Add Action
- Use the search bar to find “Set Always On Display”
- Tap the blue Turn or On buttons to customize what will happen when you run the Shortcut
- Tap Done in the top right corner to add your new Shortcut
The article mentions using Focus modes to change the setting as well – you can also use Automations in Shortcuts combined with the action mentioned above.
Updated on March 13, 2024, Apple has added release notes for Shortcuts for Shortcuts in the iOS 17.4 cycle, including new actions for the Action button on iPhone, restored actions for Apple Vision Pro users, and fixes for Shortcuts for Mac.
Here’s the full release notes:
This update includes new actions and enhancements to the Shortcuts app on macOS.
New actions
- Get Orientation provides the current device orientation (such as portrait or landscape) on iOS and iPadOS
- Get Activity determines your current activity (walking, running, cycling, or in a car) on iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS
- Shut Down, Copy to Clipboard, Recognize Music, and Show Definition are now available on visionOS
Shortcuts app on macOS
- Keyboard navigation is now supported in menus when running shortcuts
- Shortcuts can now be dragged from the library while in list view to folders in the sidebar
- Opened windows are now restored when the app relaunches
- Improved performance and reliability
Get Orientation and Get Activity are great options for making your Action button shortcuts more dynamic, changing their behavior if the phone is face-down, for example.
Bringing the Clipboard actions to visionOS is perhaps the most important update for Apple Vision Pro users, whose Clipboard shortcuts weren’t functional in vision OS 1.0 – Shut Down, Recognize Music, and Show Definition are also welcome fixes (I actually use the Restart function of Shut Down often when running betas).
On the Mac, we got a few quality of life changes, plus performance improvements – I hope to see more actions on Mac soon, especially Safari Tabs actions that came to iOS years ago.
See the full page of What’s new in Shortcuts for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14, watchOS 10, and visionOS 1.
If you’re a Stream Deck Pedal user, you are likely familiar with the Action Bar, the floating window that hovers over your desktop and shows you which actions are currently available on your pedal – after all, how else would you know what will occur when you tap a pedal?
While this is convenient when you actively want to use the pedal, you might find yourself hiding the Action Bar when you don’t want to see it – and each time I do that, I completely forget how to turn it back on. So, for my own sake, I’m publishing a how-to so I can find it again.
On Windows, right-clicking on the app tray will show the option to Show Action Bar. On macOS, however, the app doesn’t actually stay open in the Dock (since it doesn’t run as a typical application), meaning that option isn’t available behind the right-click.
Instead, the option to “Show Action Bar” is located in the Menu Bar plugin for the Stream Deck, in the sub-menu underneath the Stream Deck Pedal device (I tend to miss this location since I have my Menu Bar apps hidden with Bartender).
Click it, and your Action Bar will appear again.
Once the Action Bar is visible, this option also switches to “Hide Action Bar,” should you want to hide the actions from the screen temporarily again.
Hope this helps!
Get the Stream Deck Pedal from Elgato and use my code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off at checkout.
Today, developer Paweł Dudek has brought their beautiful Markdown slide-creation app Deckset from Mac to mobile with an iOS and iPadOS version, now available on the App Store as a separate free purchase with in-app subscription.
If you’re not familiar, Deckset is a wonderful app that makes building presentations easy by taking Markdown-formatted text and letting you quickly building colorful, impactful slides immediately.
By using importing normal markup from a Markdown document, Deckset can read any separators (---) as a slide separator, automatically creating new slides for each block of text and styling it using your formatting markup.
Deckset users can pick from a wide variety of colorful and thoughtfully-designed themes, or create their own and change the style of their presentation on the fly.
Slides can also include videos, GIFs, tables, TeX formulas, making it much more feasible and frankly fairly easy to create high-quality decks right from your iPhone or iPad, while also avoiding the complex UI of dedicated presentation software.
You can present the entire slide deck from either iPhone or iPad, but you can take advantage of a special presenter mode on iPad, showing the slides via AirPlay on an Apple TV or an external display.
Your presentations from Mac can also work, but they need to be converted to TextBundle, the format used by their iOS app – I’m familiar with this format through apps like Ulysses, which use it to store Markdown + images in a single container.
This is the one limitation compared to the Mac app, where Markdown documents can be saved anywhere in the filesystem – however, there, you must manage all your file and video references, whereas Deckset for iOS imports those files directly into the TextBundle format (unless you’re using a direct image URL as your reference link).
Deckset has long been available for Mac (their Twitter shows they joined in December 2013) for a one-time payment of $35 – I’ve been a happy customer of that product for a long time.
That being said, 35 bucks clearly doesn’t far stretch across a literal decade, and I’m sure investing in building Deckset for iOS has been hard while funded from the single up-front payment of the Mac app – that’s why I’m glad Deckset for iOS and iPadOS has moved to a subscription model.
Now, Deckset for iOS and iPadOS is $2.99 per month or $19.99/year, making it easy to purchase a subscription for just a few months if you have a big presentation coming up, or investing in the app for the long-term to save 44% annually. Plus, the Mac app is still a one-time payment if that’s all you need – and you can subscribe freely on mobile when you need it.
I’m very glad to see Deckset come to iPhone and iPad, rounding out the capability for all Apple users to easily create and present Markdown slides – Deckset makes your decks look very good with minimal effort (and a minimal design). Plus, I hope the subscription pricing enables sustainable, long-term development – I’d love to see Shortcuts support, for example 😇.
Check out Deckset on the App Store and on the web.
Hey everyone!
I’m happy to follow up on my Elgato Partner announcement and offer a 5% discount code for my community by using my partner link and entering in code ZZ-CASSINELLI at checkout.
The discount is available on all Elgato products through Elgato.com. To see the discount in action, feel free to use my link, add items to your cart, enter the code, and see the update total before checking out.
Note: the discount does not apply to accessories, replacement parts, or things like Stream Deck faceplates, and is also not stackable with other discounts or bundles.
Thanks again to Elgato for the Stream Deck bundle and I look forward to creating more throughout the year!
Check out Elgato products and use my code ZZ-CASSINELLI for 5% off at checkout.